We had a reasonably seasonable day for the trip, with high temperature in the 20s on the trail. We started off with 7 people at the parking lot, but one did not feel well and decided to stay with the cars. So, 6 of us headed on up the mountain. There was some snow on a pretty hard crust. By the time we reached the spruce line, everyone had gone to snowshoes. Our tracks were very obvious, since no one else had been out since the most recent snow. Shortly after reaching the spruce, one elected to lag behind, following the tracks, while the rest went up ahead.

The trip had been advertised as ‘3 hours to go up, 2 hours to go down, and one additional hour for thrashing around in the spruce when we get lost’ – which is exactly how things went. Once we got into the spruce, the blowdown was extensive, and the markers were near the snowline and covered with snow.

We lost and re-found the trail multiple times before losing it a final time, and just heading up to the ridge, and turning east. After we reached the summit, we had lunch and then headed down, following our tracks, to make sure we would find the following hiker if he had continued up. We did not immediately find the person, but we found writing in the snow marking his turn around, so we knew all was well. Eventually we caught up with him shortly before reaching the cars. We finished in almost exactly the predicted six hours – and with the same number of people that had started!

Participants – Peter Cottrell, David Hathaway, Barbara Mentzer, David Mentzer, Mark Lamphere, Richard Larsen.